Re: Building a map, start of a project, help will be needed

[Davinci]

Now I have a new question
I read in another post that some map mods are for sandbox only.
What is it that restricts them in that way?
Does it mean that if I build a map I might not be able to use it in a user scenario?

If that is True, I have absolutely no idea why a Map would work in a Scenario and Not in Sandbox, or vise-versa .

I cannot think of any reason why someone would have typed that, but I would have to read their whole post to understand what they were referring to.

davinci

[52ndOx]

Wow, massive amount of information again

The sandbox thing I have seen several places.
Example Saddle tanks post #12 in this thread.
Here

[Davinci]

Wow, massive amount of information again

The sandbox thing I have seen several places.
Example Saddle tanks post #12 in this thread.
Here

Hmm, I don't have the Waterloo Game - So if that information is directly related to that game, I would not be the best person to answer this question.

"Reb" - is always close by, maybe "He" can answer this one!

I really don't think that there is a difference between Multi-Player, Sandbox, or a Scenario as far as designing a Map goes.

davinci

[52ndOx]

Sounds good, thanks.
Just for the record, I only have SOWWL,and that is why I ask my questions in this forum, and not in GB.

Why are there 4 RGBs? Maybe for different networks river/road/etc, or something else?

[Davinci]

Sounds good, thanks.
Just for the record, I only have SOWWL,and that is why I ask my questions in this forum, and not in GB.

Why are there 4 RGBs? Maybe for different networks river/road/etc, or something else?

Yes, Correct!

The Four RGB files are sort of divided with each one displaying three different types of terrain.

So, by using four different RGB files, you can display twelve different terrain types on the Map.

But, the Game will run with one, two, three, or four RGB files, it's just that most Map designers will always use four to make the Map look better.

davinci

[52ndOx]

So on any RGB pure red is one type of terrain, pure green another, and pure blue the third?
Presumably those colours are then referenced in a CSV. But which one?

So many questions lol, you are amazingly helpful.

[Davinci]

So on any RGB pure red is one type of terrain, pure green another, and pure blue the third?
Presumably those colours are then referenced in a CSV. But which one?

So many questions lol, you are amazingly helpful.

None of the Colors are really represented in the MapName.csv file - it goes back to the Two-Separate-Engines.

But, that is only partially True, once again, sort of hard to put into words.....

The PR6 - has to have a way of interpreting which terrain it is supposed to draw and where it is suppose to draw it, here is where the different color's come into play. Don't think about the Game at this time, Only the PR6 Program. The Game has Nothing to do with this Process.

So, if I want a Road-System, I will tell the PR6 Program - Road is this Color "Red" - So wherever I place the Color "Red" and assign it to a Graphic of "Dirt" - place my road here.

If, I want a different color for the outside of the road, a different texture, I will use a different color, lets say "Green".

The PR6 - will draw the road ( Red ), and everywhere outside of that road if it see's the Color "Green" it will place down a different texture that is assigned to green.

Now, the RGB files are numbered 1 - 4, so if the Color Red does something on RGB1, the Color red will do something completely different on RGB2. They are four separate files.

The PR6 Program - will allow you to select which texture is assigned to which RGB file, and to which Color that is on the RGB file. This is why you can have twelve different textures to represent your Map.

The Game doesn't really have anything to do with any of this, but the game is Programmed to read the MapName.bmp file - which is everything that is located on the four RGB files and work off a sort of coordinate system.

Basically, if you were to take all of the Colors off of the four RGB files and lay them down on a single sheet, it should have the exact coordinates of the Mapname.bmp file.

Another way of looking at this is something like this....

You have four pieces of glass that are 12" by 12".

You can only place three colors on each one of them, but you don't want the colors to overlap each other and sort of blur out.

So, on the first piece you put down a color that will represent the main ground terrain, and the main road terrain, and the outside of the main road.

The second piece of glass, might contain the area of the woods. So, if you place the second sheet of glass over the first sheet, you would make sure that the colors didn't overlap.

The same process goes for the other two pieces of glass, basically once you finish, you can stack them on top of each other and the RGB colors shouldn't overlap, and should represent the design of your Map.

The MapName.bmp - Can't read the RGB Colors - It is designed to only read Greyscale Colors.

So, the Greyscale Colors that you see on the MapName.bmp file is really all four of the RGB files if they were transparent and stacked on top of each other.

Now, since the Game is not designed to read the RGB Colors - it will use "Greyscale Colors" to represent the exact coordinates of the RGB files. It doesn't do this on it's own, you have to manually design the MapName.bmp file which is another way of designing all four of the RGB files except in Greyscale Colors only.

The MapName.csv file will read these Greyscale colors from the MapName.bmp file and then assign the up to Five different terrain objects that you have selected onto the Map that you view in the game.

Another thing is that as you already know, there are more than One Color of Red,Green, and Blue that you can use in the RGB files. The PR6 will still read them as Red, Green or Blue, but display them in a sort of different way. It can be use to sort of "Fade" the terrain to show as solid, or a bit faded.

Simple and Clear as Muddy Water!

davinci

[52ndOx]

Phew

My mission now, understand the inter-relationships between SOWWL engine and the 5 map files, plus the Power Render and the RGB/texture files that end up in the lsl that the SOWWL engine uses. :whistle:

So I looked more closely at the map I began to edit, the N-S map (WLGen1).
Unsurprisingly there are questions.

So:

All this is about an arbitrary field at the junction of two roads in a part of the map.

in the game it looks like:


In the bmp (which is 2048*2048 in 8b grayscale) it looks like:


There is a resemblance, but already problems.

• There are only 2 values, 210 and 215, should be field and plowed field according to the csv, but 3 terrain types - which must be then coming from the lsl.
• There are values that are not listed in the csv, eg the roads are 39,41,43,45 and the only one listed is supposed to be water, as shown here:

How can the bmp contain values not defined in the csv?

So we come to the 4 RGBs, which get compiled into the lsl.
There are problems

• They are jpgs?? A great way to lose data in compression and decompression.
• They are not the same size?? Some are 1024*1024 and others 2048*2048. Which means coordinates cannot match!
• They are saved as 24b?? This allows for millions of colours when it seems only 12 textures are allowed

So I make them all 2048*2048.

One looks like this:

Now we might be able to see why the game shows 3 different fields, but what about the RGB values here?
We have 0,255,1 (so not quite pure green) 254,0,0 (so not quite pure red) and 0,0,244 (so not quite pure blue).
I don't understand the effect of these very subtle deviations from standard in the channels.

Then there is this one:

This seems to add some kind of variation, but the blue has many different values, so what texture or textures does it reference?

Similarly here:

This contains many variation of red, blue and green. Are they just transparency levels for again different texture overlays?

And the last file here:

Has the road network, but again includes something else.
And the black is not black but very dark grey (1,1,1)

TLDR;
In summary, for a map which is provided in game and not a 3rd party addon.

• How can there be grayscale values in the bmp which don't seem to have a terrain type in the csv?
• Why are some of the RGB files encoded in the lsl different sizes?
• Why are the RGBs 24b?
• If you use an arbitrary 24b colour in an RGB, possibly influencing transparency, how do you know which texture the SOW engine will render in game? (The SDK gives no info about how the lsl is used, just says it is encoded and not modable). There are 12 textures in the data, which again are jpgs.

Sorry. And thanks if you read this.

[Biondo]

Hi 52nd,

Where do you read those roads values? In the bmp? A road, in those maps, should have only 100/105 and 110/115 values iirc

About the four RGB files I did like you. If the bmp is 2048*2048 then I change all the RGB to that resolution to avoid problems when you copy/paste something.

You have to think of RGB as layers where you draw textures. So you can draw different texture on the same spot to achieve a particular feature, for example a swamp where you can mix grass and water.

If you open pr6 and click on Edit>Colormap or Edit>texture generator, you can see to what texture the RGB refers. You'll see the first three textures then rgb1; it means that the first is related to red, the second to green and so on. Then other three textures and rgb2 etc..

You can also change textures from here.

The darker and pure you make a colour, the darker and less faded will be the texture.

I suppose the different size are to save memory space and to blur a bit the edges of the textures.

Others map modders here could be more precise than me

[Davinci]

Phew
My mission now, understand the inter-relationships between SOWWL engine and the 5 map files, plus the Power Render and the RGB/texture files that end up in the lsl that the SOWWL engine uses. :whistle:

Exactly, I could Not have said it any better!

All this is about an arbitrary field at the junction of two roads in a part of the map.

in the game it looks like:


In the bmp (which is 2048*2048 in 8b grayscale) it looks like:


There is a resemblance, but already problems.

• There are only 2 values, 210 and 215, should be field and plowed field according to the csv, but 3 terrain types - which must be then coming from the lsl.
• There are values that are not listed in the csv, eg the roads are 39,41,43,45 and the only one listed is supposed to be water, as shown here:

How can the bmp contain values not defined in the csv?

The Pictures are quite small, sort of hard to see clearly, it appears that there are two different Greyscale Colors used to represent two different types of terrain, and the darker color appears to be a bush \ weed line separating the fields.

The Greyscale Color 210 and 215 can have up too five different terrain graphics assigned to them, an example would be if you wanted the grass to not appear as a single texture. But, a sort of mixed effect.

The Greyscale Colors - 39,41,and 43 - are most likely faded colors that were used to represent another color at the time of design.

I think that it depends on which type of program was used to Edit the MapName.bmp file - Photoshop Saved bmp files have never faded as far as I know.

If the Colors are not defined - they will produce an Error - that can be viewed in the (Log) file, so if there are thousands of bad-Colors - the log file will be quite long.

So we come to the 4 RGBs, which get compiled into the lsl.
There are problems

• They are jpgs?? A great way to lose data in compression and decompression.
• They are not the same size?? Some are 1024*1024 and others 2048*2048. Which means coordinates cannot match!
• They are saved as 24b?? This allows for millions of colours when it seems only 12 textures are allowed

So I make them all 2048*2048.

True, No matter what you do, those (Jpeg) files will fade every time you work on them, and the design of the Maps requires that you Open and Close them multiple times. Almost No way around that particular problem.
The different sizes will cause the game to stretch the files, so it is better to make all of them the same size. The downside to that is that it is going to make the ( lsl ) file larger in size.

True, there are quite a lot of different colors of RGB - that will still work, the game will sort of fade the colors ( terrain ) if a different shade of RGB is used. Black and Grey can also be used in the RGB files. It will also just fade the textures that are displayed.
One looks like this:

I don't understand the effect of these very subtle deviations from standard in the channels.

I am probably not explaining this right, But different shades of RGB will still draw the texture that you assign to it, but it will NOT draw it with the same intensity, a lighter Red will draw the terrain a lighter shade, sort of a faded look.

An example would be that the grass is only a solid green on a golf course, in a regular field, the grass might be green, but different shades of green, yellow and brown.

Then there is this one:

This seems to add some kind of variation, but the blue has many different values, so what texture or textures does it reference?

The texture that is assigned here!

The attachment 3.png is no longer available

This Menu - dictates which texture is assigned to Red, Green, or Blue - for that particular RGB file.

Similarly here:

This contains many variation of red, blue and green. Are they just transparency levels for again different texture overlays?

Used to break up the terrain, so that it doesn't appear like a golf course, different textures to change the appearance of the ground.

And the last file here:

Has the road network, but again includes something else.
And the black is not black but very dark grey (1,1,1)

The Red - appears to be a sort of darker shade of dirt used to separate the fields, and also appear outside of the road.
The green is the road as you have already stated, not sure what the blue is used for in that picture.

[*]How can there be grayscale values in the bmp which don't seem to have a terrain type in the csv?
[*]Why are some of the RGB files encoded in the lsl different sizes?
[*]Why are the RGBs 24b?
[*]If you use an arbitrary 24b colour in an RGB, possibly influencing transparency, how do you know which texture the SOW engine will render in game? (The SDK gives no info about how the lsl is used, just says it is encoded and not modable). There are 12 textures in the data, which again are jpgs.
[/list]

1) Would be a faded color which will result in an error, there is not supposed to be any colors used in the (bmp) that is not defined the the (csv).
2) Just another way of doing the (lsl) file, remember that each Modder learned how to edit the Maps on their own, there is NOT a single way of doing this.
3) No idea!
4) The Picture above will display how the textures are assigned, and to which RGB Color they are assigned to.

davinci